OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Knowledge-powered Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) for Network Automation Towards 6G
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2022
Year: 2022

Communication networks are becoming increasingly complex towards 6G. Manual management is no longer an option for network operators. Network automation has been widely discussed in the networking community, and it is a sensible means to manage the complex communication network. Deep learning models developed to enable network automation for given operation practices have the limitations of 1) lack of explainability and 2) inapplicable across different networks and/or network settings. To tackle the above issues, in this article we propose a new knowledge-powered framework that provides a human-understandable explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) agent for network automation. A case study of path selection is developed to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed framework. Research on network automation is still in its infancy. Therefore, at the end of this article, we provide a list of challenges and open issues that can guide further research in this important area.
Injection Attacks Reloaded: Tunnelling Malicious Payloads over DNS
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2022
Year: 2022

The traditional design principle for Internet protocols indicates: "Be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving" [RFC1958], and DNS is no exception to this. The transparency of DNS in handling the DNS records, also standardised specifically for DNS [RFC3597], is one of the key features that made it such a popular platform facilitating a constantly increasing number of new applications. An application simply creates a new DNS record and can instantly start distributing it over DNS without requiring any changes to the DNS servers and platforms. Our Internet wide study confirms that more than 1.3M (96% of tested) open DNS resolvers are standard compliant and treat DNS records transparently. In this work we show that this `transparency' introduces a severe vulnerability in the Internet: we demonstrate a new method to launch string injection attacks by encoding malicious payloads into DNS records. We show how to weaponise such DNS records to attack popular applications. For instance, we apply string injection to launch a new type of DNS cache poisoning attack, which we evaluated against a population of open resolvers and found 105K to be vulnerable. Such cache poisoning cannot be prevented with common setups of DNSSEC. Our attacks apply to internal as well as to public services, for instance, we reveal that all eduroam services are vulnerable to our injection attacks, allowing us to launch exploits ranging from unauthorised access to eduroam networks to resource starvation. Depending on the application, our attacks cause system crashes, data corruption and leakage, degradation of security, and can introduce remote code execution and arbitrary errors. In our evaluation of the attacks in the Internet we find that all the standard compliant open DNS resolvers we tested allow our injection attacks against applications and users on their networks.
Comparison of PAM-6 Modulations for Short-Reach Fiber-Optic Links with Intensity Modulation and Direct Detection
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2022
Year: 2022

PAM-6 transmission is considered for short-reach fiber-optic links with intensity modulation and direct detection. Experiments show that probabilistically-shaped PAM-6 and a framed-cross QAM-32 constellation outperform conventional cross QAM-32 under a peak power constraint.
A Continual Deepfake Detection Benchmark: Dataset, Methods, and Essentials
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

There have been emerging a number of benchmarks and techniques for the detection of deepfakes. However, very few works study the detection of incrementally appearing deepfakes in the real-world scenarios. To simulate the wild scenes, this paper suggests a continual deepfake detection benchmark (CDDB) over a new collection of deepfakes from both known and unknown generative models. The suggested CDDB designs multiple evaluations on the detection over easy, hard, and long sequence of deepfake tasks, with a set of appropriate measures. In addition, we exploit multiple approaches to adapt multiclass incremental learning methods, commonly used in the continual visual recognition, to the continual deepfake detection problem. We evaluate existing methods, including their adapted ones, on the proposed CDDB. Within the proposed benchmark, we explore some commonly known essentials of standard continual learning. Our study provides new insights on these essentials in the context of continual deepfake detection. The suggested CDDB is clearly more challenging than the existing benchmarks, which thus offers a suitable evaluation avenue to the future research. Both data and code are available at https://github.com/Coral79/CDDB.
Contrastive Supervised Distillation for Continual Representation Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

In this paper, we propose a novel training procedure for the continual representation learning problem in which a neural network model is sequentially learned to alleviate catastrophic forgetting in visual search tasks. Our method, called Contrastive Supervised Distillation (CSD), reduces feature forgetting while learning discriminative features. This is achieved by leveraging labels information in a distillation setting in which the student model is contrastively learned from the teacher model. Extensive experiments show that CSD performs favorably in mitigating catastrophic forgetting by outperforming current state-of-the-art methods. Our results also provide further evidence that feature forgetting evaluated in visual retrieval tasks is not as catastrophic as in classification tasks. Code at: https://github.com/NiccoBiondi/ContrastiveSupervisedDistillation.
Automatic Tuberculosis and COVID-19 cough classification using deep learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

We present a deep learning based automatic cough classifier which can discriminate tuberculosis (TB) coughs from COVID-19 coughs and healthy coughs. Both TB and COVID-19 are respiratory diseases, contagious, have cough as a predominant symptom and claim thousands of lives each year. The cough audio recordings were collected at both indoor and outdoor settings and also uploaded using smartphones from subjects around the globe, thus containing various levels of noise. This cough data include 1.68 hours of TB coughs, 18.54 minutes of COVID-19 coughs and 1.69 hours of healthy coughs from 47 TB patients, 229 COVID-19 patients and 1498 healthy patients and were used to train and evaluate a CNN, LSTM and Resnet50. These three deep architectures were also pre-trained on 2.14 hours of sneeze, 2.91 hours of speech and 2.79 hours of noise for improved performance. The class-imbalance in our dataset was addressed by using SMOTE data balancing technique and using performance metrics such as F1-score and AUC. Our study shows that the highest F1-scores of 0.9259 and 0.8631 have been achieved from a pre-trained Resnet50 for two-class (TB vs COVID-19) and three-class (TB vs COVID-19 vs healthy) cough classification tasks, respectively. The application of deep transfer learning has improved the classifiers' performance and makes them more robust as they generalise better over the cross-validation folds. Their performances exceed the TB triage test requirements set by the world health organisation (WHO). The features producing the best performance contain higher order of MFCCs suggesting that the differences between TB and COVID-19 coughs are not perceivable by the human ear. This type of cough audio classification is non-contact, cost-effective and can easily be deployed on a smartphone, thus it can be an excellent tool for both TB and COVID-19 screening.
DNA data storage, sequencing data-carrying DNA
Venue: arXiv cs.ET 2022
Year: 2022

DNA is a leading candidate as the next archival storage media due to its density, durability and sustainability. To read (and write) data DNA storage exploits technology that has been developed over decades to sequence naturally occurring DNA in the life sciences. To achieve higher accuracy for previously unseen, biological DNA, sequencing relies on extending and training deep machine learning models known as basecallers. This growth in model complexity requires substantial resources, both computational and data sets. It also eliminates the possibility of a compact read head for DNA as a storage medium. We argue that we need to depart from blindly using sequencing models from the life sciences for DNA data storage. The difference is striking: for life science applications we have no control over the DNA, however, in the case of DNA data storage, we control how it is written, as well as the particular write head. More specifically, data-carrying DNA can be modulated and embedded with alignment markers and error correcting codes to guarantee higher fidelity and to carry out some of the work that the machine learning models perform. In this paper, we study accuracy trade-offs between deep model size and error correcting codes. We show that, starting with a model size of 107MB, the reduced accuracy from model compression can be compensated by using simple error correcting codes in the DNA sequences. In our experiments, we show that a substantial reduction in the size of the model does not incur an undue penalty for the error correcting codes used, therefore paving the way for portable data-carrying DNA read head. Crucially, we show that through the joint use of model compression and error correcting codes, we achieve a higher read accuracy than without compression and error correction codes.
Efficient Automated Deep Learning for Time Series Forecasting
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Recent years have witnessed tremendously improved efficiency of Automated Machine Learning (AutoML), especially Automated Deep Learning (AutoDL) systems, but recent work focuses on tabular, image, or NLP tasks. So far, little attention has been paid to general AutoDL frameworks for time series forecasting, despite the enormous success in applying different novel architectures to such tasks. In this paper, we propose an efficient approach for the joint optimization of neural architecture and hyperparameters of the entire data processing pipeline for time series forecasting. In contrast to common NAS search spaces, we designed a novel neural architecture search space covering various state-of-the-art architectures, allowing for an efficient macro-search over different DL approaches. To efficiently search in such a large configuration space, we use Bayesian optimization with multi-fidelity optimization. We empirically study several different budget types enabling efficient multi-fidelity optimization on different forecasting datasets. Furthermore, we compared our resulting system, dubbed \system, against several established baselines and show that it significantly outperforms all of them across several datasets.
Studying Scientific Data Lifecycle in On-demand Distributed Storage Caches
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2022
Year: 2022

The XRootD system is used to transfer, store, and cache large datasets from high-energy physics (HEP). In this study we focus on its capability as distributed on-demand storage cache. Through exploring a large set of daily log files between 2020 and 2021, we seek to understand the data access patterns that might inform future cache design. Our study begins with a set of summary statistics regarding file read operations, file lifetimes, and file transfers. We observe that the number of read operations on each file remains nearly constant, while the average size of a read operation grows over time. Furthermore, files tend to have a consistent length of time during which they remain open and are in use. Based on this comprehensive study of the cache access statistics, we developed a cache simulator to explore the behavior of caches of different sizes. Within a certain size range, we find that increasing the XRootD cache size improves the cache hit rate, yielding faster overall file access. In particular, we find that increase the cache size from 40TB to 56TB could increase the hit rate from 0.62 to 0.89, which is a significant increase in cache effectiveness for modest cost.
Video-ReTime: Learning Temporally Varying Speediness for Time Remapping
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

We propose a method for generating a temporally remapped video that matches the desired target duration while maximally preserving natural video dynamics. Our approach trains a neural network through self-supervision to recognize and accurately localize temporally varying changes in the video playback speed. To re-time videos, we 1. use the model to infer the slowness of individual video frames, and 2. optimize the temporal frame sub-sampling to be consistent with the model's slowness predictions. We demonstrate that this model can detect playback speed variations more accurately while also being orders of magnitude more efficient than prior approaches. Furthermore, we propose an optimization for video re-timing that enables precise control over the target duration and performs more robustly on longer videos than prior methods. We evaluate the model quantitatively on artificially speed-up videos, through transfer to action recognition, and qualitatively through user studies.
Blockchain-based Secure Client Selection in Federated Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2022
Year: 2022

Despite the great potential of Federated Learning (FL) in large-scale distributed learning, the current system is still subject to several privacy issues due to the fact that local models trained by clients are exposed to the central server. Consequently, secure aggregation protocols for FL have been developed to conceal the local models from the server. However, we show that, by manipulating the client selection process, the server can circumvent the secure aggregation to learn the local models of a victim client, indicating that secure aggregation alone is inadequate for privacy protection. To tackle this issue, we leverage blockchain technology to propose a verifiable client selection protocol. Owing to the immutability and transparency of blockchain, our proposed protocol enforces a random selection of clients, making the server unable to control the selection process at its discretion. We present security proofs showing that our protocol is secure against this attack. Additionally, we conduct several experiments on an Ethereum-like blockchain to demonstrate the feasibility and practicality of our solution.
NTIRE 2022 Challenge on Efficient Super-Resolution: Methods and Results
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

This paper reviews the NTIRE 2022 challenge on efficient single image super-resolution with focus on the proposed solutions and results. The task of the challenge was to super-resolve an input image with a magnification factor of $\times$4 based on pairs of low and corresponding high resolution images. The aim was to design a network for single image super-resolution that achieved improvement of efficiency measured according to several metrics including runtime, parameters, FLOPs, activations, and memory consumption while at least maintaining the PSNR of 29.00dB on DIV2K validation set. IMDN is set as the baseline for efficiency measurement. The challenge had 3 tracks including the main track (runtime), sub-track one (model complexity), and sub-track two (overall performance). In the main track, the practical runtime performance of the submissions was evaluated. The rank of the teams were determined directly by the absolute value of the average runtime on the validation set and test set. In sub-track one, the number of parameters and FLOPs were considered. And the individual rankings of the two metrics were summed up to determine a final ranking in this track. In sub-track two, all of the five metrics mentioned in the description of the challenge including runtime, parameter count, FLOPs, activations, and memory consumption were considered. Similar to sub-track one, the rankings of five metrics were summed up to determine a final ranking. The challenge had 303 registered participants, and 43 teams made valid submissions. They gauge the state-of-the-art in efficient single image super-resolution.
A Deep Learning Approach for Predicting Two-dimensional Soil Consolidation Using Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINN)
Venue: arXiv cs.CE 2022
Year: 2022

Soil consolidation is closely related to seepage, stability, and settlement of geotechnical buildings and foundations, and directly affects the use and safety of superstructures. Nowadays, the unidirectional consolidation theory of soils is widely used in certain conditions and approximate calculations. The multi-directional theory of soil consolidation is more reasonable than the unidirectional theory in practical applications, but it is much more complicated in terms of index determination and solution. To address the above problem, in this paper, we propose a deep learning method using physics-informed neural networks (PINN) to predict the excess pore water pressure of two-dimensional soil consolidation. In the proposed method, (1) a fully connected neural network is constructed, (2) the computational domain, partial differential equation (PDE), and constraints are defined to generate data for model training, and (3) the PDE of two-dimensional soil consolidation and the model of the neural network is connected to reduce the loss of the model. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by comparison with the numerical solution of PDE for two-dimensional consolidation. Using this method, the excess pore water pressure could be predicted simply and efficiently. In addition, the method was applied to predict the soil excess pore water pressure in the foundation in a real case at Tianjin port, China. The proposed deep learning approach can be used to investigate the large and complex multi-directional soil consolidation.
Structured, flexible, and robust: benchmarking and improving large language models towards more human-like behavior in out-of-distribution reasoning tasks
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2022
Year: 2022

Human language offers a powerful window into our thoughts -- we tell stories, give explanations, and express our beliefs and goals through words. Abundant evidence also suggests that language plays a developmental role in structuring our learning. Here, we ask: how much of human-like thinking can be captured by learning statistical patterns in language alone? We first contribute a new challenge benchmark for comparing humans and distributional large language models (LLMs). Our benchmark contains two problem-solving domains (planning and explanation generation) and is designed to require generalization to new, out-of-distribution problems expressed in language. We find that humans are far more robust than LLMs on this benchmark. Next, we propose a hybrid Parse-and-Solve model, which augments distributional LLMs with a structured symbolic reasoning module. We find that this model shows more robust adaptation to out-of-distribution planning problems, demonstrating the promise of hybrid AI models for more human-like reasoning.
DISARM: Detecting the Victims Targeted by Harmful Memes
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2022
Year: 2022

Internet memes have emerged as an increasingly popular means of communication on the Web. Although typically intended to elicit humour, they have been increasingly used to spread hatred, trolling, and cyberbullying, as well as to target specific individuals, communities, or society on political, socio-cultural, and psychological grounds. While previous work has focused on detecting harmful, hateful, and offensive memes, identifying whom they attack remains a challenging and underexplored area. Here we aim to bridge this gap. In particular, we create a dataset where we annotate each meme with its victim(s) such as the name of the targeted person(s), organization(s), and community(ies). We then propose DISARM (Detecting vIctimS targeted by hARmful Memes), a framework that uses named entity recognition and person identification to detect all entities a meme is referring to, and then, incorporates a novel contextualized multimodal deep neural network to classify whether the meme intends to harm these entities. We perform several systematic experiments on three test setups, corresponding to entities that are (a) all seen while training, (b) not seen as a harmful target on training, and (c) not seen at all on training. The evaluation results show that DISARM significantly outperforms ten unimodal and multimodal systems. Finally, we show that DISARM is interpretable and comparatively more generalizable and that it can reduce the relative error rate for harmful target identification by up to 9 points absolute over several strong multimodal rivals.
"There Is Not Enough Information": On the Effects of Explanations on Perceptions of Informational Fairness and Trustworthiness in Automated Decision-Making
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2022
Year: 2022

Automated decision systems (ADS) are increasingly used for consequential decision-making. These systems often rely on sophisticated yet opaque machine learning models, which do not allow for understanding how a given decision was arrived at. In this work, we conduct a human subject study to assess people's perceptions of informational fairness (i.e., whether people think they are given adequate information on and explanation of the process and its outcomes) and trustworthiness of an underlying ADS when provided with varying types of information about the system. More specifically, we instantiate an ADS in the area of automated loan approval and generate different explanations that are commonly used in the literature. We randomize the amount of information that study participants get to see by providing certain groups of people with the same explanations as others plus additional explanations. From our quantitative analyses, we observe that different amounts of information as well as people's (self-assessed) AI literacy significantly influence the perceived informational fairness, which, in turn, positively relates to perceived trustworthiness of the ADS. A comprehensive analysis of qualitative feedback sheds light on people's desiderata for explanations, among which are (i) consistency (both with people's expectations and across different explanations), (ii) disclosure of monotonic relationships between features and outcome, and (iii) actionability of recommendations.
Deep Learning and Synthetic Media
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Deep learning algorithms are rapidly changing the way in which audiovisual media can be produced. Synthetic audiovisual media generated with deep learning - often subsumed colloquially under the label "deepfakes" - have a number of impressive characteristics; they are increasingly trivial to produce, and can be indistinguishable from real sounds and images recorded with a sensor. Much attention has been dedicated to ethical concerns raised by this technological development. Here, I focus instead on a set of issues related to the notion of synthetic audiovisual media, its place within a broader taxonomy of audiovisual media, and how deep learning techniques differ from more traditional approaches to media synthesis. After reviewing important etiological features of deep learning pipelines for media manipulation and generation, I argue that "deepfakes" and related synthetic media produced with such pipelines do not merely offer incremental improvements over previous methods, but challenge traditional taxonomical distinctions, and pave the way for genuinely novel kinds of audiovisual media.